I often feel like I'm pinned in a straightjacket when I'm tinkering with the deck because, let's face it, there just isn't any room to putz with this deck. Lackeys, Matrons, Ringleaders, Warchiefs, and Vials are automatic 4-ofs. Piledrivers and Incinerators are usually 4-ofs. There is also always always always at least one Siege-Gang Commander. That leaves about 10 non-land slots open, and the deciding how to fill them doesn't even change the way the deck plays. The card choices for the 10 spare slots always seem to be split into 3 categories: Creature removal (Wierdings or Stingscourger), Creature advantage (Siege-Gang or War Marshal, or Chieftan), or Tech (Wort, Kiki-Jiki, Tinkerer, Sharpshooter, Instigator). And the pain of it is, decks that swing to any extreme still manage to win tournaments. Just look through the top placing Goblins lists on SSG.
Anthony Avitollo plays for more removal.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=33473
Noah Swartz gets more tokens into play.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deck...p?DeckID=33469
And Ryan Messick does well with a tech heavy deck (shown above).
And the Columbus GP showed 2 Goblin decks making day 2 undefeated, one R/B and one mono-red. Phillip Yam's decklist cuts "core" cards (Piledriver and Warchief) to make room for tech cards like Sharpshooter and Fanatic and to have a higher percentage of token generating War Marshals and Siege Gangs. Chris Nighbor's deck, on the other hand, is as straightforward a classic Goblin decklist as you could ever hope to see.
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...e/gpcol10/day2
To me, the lack of diversity between these decklists says that the core of the deck is what wins matches, and is robust enough to win tournaments. Tuning a Goblin deck won't do anything for your final results. Those 10 open slots don't really matter at this point. There is collective knowledge within the Magic community that knows what the deck is and how it wins and how to play against it. A Goblin deck can only be tuned to the meta, in my opinion. Then it's up to smart play and, as always, a little luck.
The sideboard continues to be the biggest mystery for me as our much-loved deck doesn't want to get diluted with non-Goblin cards. If they made a Cursecatcher-goblin equivalent it would be an automatic sideboard 4-of. If there was a Goblin Faerie Macabre it wouldn't even be questioned. But there's not. And due to the power of the deck already, probably never will be.
So it goes.